TWA Hotel

Don't rain on our parade

Our wedding turned out to be incredibly beautiful, thanks to a unique venue and execution by its staff. However, that perfect day was almost derailed by the unacceptable pressure campaign to change ceremony locations due to concerns over furniture getting wet. We wanted this review to capture our nearly 20 months of planning with the TWA Hotel. PLANNING PROS: -Variety of spaces -Responsiveness -Flexibility for storing supplies CONS: -No FAQ document -Frustrating room block system -Forgotten menu tasting notification -Lack of communication and contradictory info from the Paris Cafe for rehearsal dinner THE WEDDING PROS: -Organized and accommodating staff -The food, especially the pastrami station and red velvet cake for dessert CONS: -Wrong display with typo on Solaris board in the Sunken Lounge -Our tiered wedding cake wasn’t cut and served even tho there clearly wasn’t enough sheet cake to pass around -The weather “policy”: We were told that we could make a final decision on an outdoor ceremony up until the morning of our wedding, and our point of contact reassured us of this during our final walkthru 2 weeks out. Our contract also secured the Sunken Lounge as the backup option if we chose to move indoors. However, in the final days and hours before our wedding, we were pressured to move our ceremony indoors, despite nearly all weather reports showing clear skies for our 5-6pm ceremony and rain only after 9pm. Our point of contact started questioning our outdoor plans 4-5 days before the wedding, and even met with us multiple times - first in the lobby while we were dropping off supplies 2 days before our wedding, again when we were checking in the next day, and yet again when we were at the pool before our rehearsal dinner, where we had to brush off our guests in order to have a serious meeting. Each time, they told us we needed to make a "final call" now, not the morning-of as we had been told before. After listing their reasons to move the ceremony indoors (which included threatening to release the Sunken Lounge from our backup option, despite what our contract said), the point of contact mentioned that the head manager was concerned about the rain damaging the leather chairs, and then proposed a “solution” of having the ceremony outside, but not setting up any chairs so that our guests would stand for the entire ceremony. It was clear to us that the real reason why we were being pressured was that the manager didn’t want their leather chairs to get wet! We asserted that, unless we were explicitly told we couldn't have our ceremony outside, we would stick with the outdoor option. The morning of our wedding, our day-of coordinator informed us that the venue was insisting they now had a “50% chance of rain policy”, giving them the “right” to change ceremony locations. We immediately forwarded reports from 10 weather sites that all had a chance of rain between 5-7pm at 0-30%. We finally saw chairs being set up outside in the mid-afternoon, and when our ceremony got underway, the clouds parted ways and the sun started shining. CONCLUSION: The TWA Hotel is such a special place to celebrate your wedding! Before you sign the contract, however, understand that you’ll have to stay on top of the planning process, and in cases like ours, fight for what you envision. Make sure the contract spells out any and all promises — there were items that we made sure they honored as it was clear the hotel’s policies had changed since the signing.